MP Ian Liddell-Grainger says families in rural areas are getting a poor deal from the NHS because of the scarcity of GPs.
Now he is to meet Health Secretary Victoria Atkins to ask for more resources to set up and maintain country medical practices.
Mr Liddell-Grainger, MP for Bridgwater and West Somerset, said those living in the countryside had been the worst affected by the shortage of general practitioners which had left patients waiting weeks for an appointment.
“The general trend is recent years has been the concentration of medical services in larger centres of population with a commensurate loss of country GPs,” he said.
“This impacts unjustly on thousands of rural families, leaving them to make sometimes lengthy journeys to keep an appointment.
“The fact is they make exactly the same National Insurance contributions as anyone else and therefore they are entitled to receive the same level of service as those in towns and cities.”
Mr Liddell-Grainger said his constituency was home to a model of how rural medical services should be delivered in the shape of the Dunster and Porlock practice, which was constantly being praised for its outstanding quality of service to the community.
“But there are many areas which are not so well served and we absolutely must look at ways of attracting more GPs to work in country areas,” he said.
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